Snowsurfing: hmmm ... a flash in the pan?

Just recently, I've spied a new product on the block that looks like it is trying to displace some of the snowboard's (and perhaps skis') marketshare: the Snow-surfboard. It looks like a skate board with a single ski underneath. You can also get a version with just the skateboard part, which you can attache to your own ski.

It is billed as having "a much smoother sensation than snowboarding" in the words of Ben Skinner, champion longboard surfer/wakeboarder and one of five professional snow-surfers (already?). Barefoot Boarding, the company behind the board, is probably thus named because you don't bind yourself in to the board - just step on it and slide. The deck is made of supergrip rubber. You're only tied to it by a leash, like a surfboard, to prevent it getting away from you on the slope. The snow-surfboard is reported to feel astonshingly similar to surfing and be easier to pick up than snowboarding.

The company itself was started by the duo Ian Colley (former banker who bank rolled the project with amodest £150k - according to Night and Day Live magazine) and Grant Strover (a Cornish surfer, who "liked snowboarding but ... not being bound to the board". The product was launched in the UK first, on 12 Oct at the Ski and Snow Show in London.



If reports can be believed, the Snow-surfboard, takes Jake Burton's early eighties "snurfer" idea and brings it to proper fruition. Barefoot is pushing these products hard and will have boards to hire soon (by the hour) at the MK, Castleford and Braehead Xscapes. As well as Tamworth's SnowDome.

Critics have raved about it so far, but there has not been much chatter about it on the US orUK Internet forums yet. Not that I've seen anyway.

With snowboarding sales waning, this could be a big hit that raises the profile of wintersports - or it could just be a passing fad...

Let's see.


fro